In between, it stages guided tours of secret spaces and underground art, works with award-winning chefs and hosts late-night music and performance inside the city’s normally-shuttered museums and galleries. And it does this for one weekend only – forty-eight hours of some of the most unusual cultural experiences found anywhere within the UK:
AND Festival launch . After its smash-hit inaugural year in Liverpool last Autumn, this year’s Abandon Normal Devices comes to Manchester. A festival of new cinema and digital culture, it includes the UK premiere of Turner Prize winning artist Gillian Wearing’s first feature-length film, Self Made as well as a slew of new commissions from internationally renowned artists, filmmakers and cultural provocateurs including artist Phil Collins in a continuation of his critically acclaimed work Marxism Today. Inside the exuberant Neo-Classical setting of the Freemason’s Hall Lawrence Malstaf’s unmissable and claustrophobic performance, Shrink, where the artist is vacuum-packed and suspended in mid-air.
Un-convention is one of the UK’s most eclectic independent music industry events containing much for those who just love (rather than work in) new music. Employing such unconventional spaces as a barge, Salford Lads’ Club and a church, featuring Bill Drummond, Jarvis Cocker, Jon McClure, Brian Travers and Kevin Cummins – all doing ‘interesting things in the most unexplored places in the city’ - with a travelling circus, music photography projected onto buildings, Colombian Hip Hop, Jah Wobble, the BBC Philharmonic and a brass band as well.
A one-off gig, that’s part performance art and part club night, taking place in the distinctly unusual setting of The Whitworth Art Gallery. DJ Matthew Krysko (The Warehouse Project/ Sankeys/Tribal Gathering) and the award winning performance artist Naomi Kashiwagi will perform a new collaborative work that combines electronic music with wind-up gramophones.
See Manchester by water where a family boat party connects the Manchester Ship Canal with the River Irwell and puts food by one of the Northwest’s top chefs, Robert Owen Brown, on the menu. Postcards from Manchester. Don’t just visit Manchester – imagine it. As part of Manchester Literature Festival, the acclaimed and award winning poets Mandy Coe and John Siddique will be at Manchester Museum creating poetry postcards with visitors, a unique way to capture the sights, sounds and smells of the city.
Participating individuals, organisations and festivals. The AND Festival, Beating Wing Orchestra, Castlefield Gallery, Chinese Arts Centre, Clarion Cycling Club, The Contact, Cornerhouse, CUBE, Dave Haslam, Electriks, Eurocultured, Family Friendly Film Festival, GreenRoom, Imperial War Museum North, The International Anthony Burgess Foundation, The John Rylands Library, Jonathan Schofield, The Lowry, Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester Comedy Festival, Manchester Design Corporation, Manchester Food & Drink Festival, Manchester Jazz Festival, Manchester Literature Festival, The Manchester Museum, Manchester Science Festival, Manchester Tourist Guiding Agency, The Mark Addy, MOSI the Museum of Science & Industry, The People’s History Museum, Robert Owen Brown, Studiomama, Un-convention, The Whitworth Art Gallery, 24:7 Theatre Festival
For more information: www. http://www.www.www.creativetourist.com/weekender
